


Remember, I Love You

by Pixiepeekboo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, bad guy, criminal lovers - Freeform, villain AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23770390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixiepeekboo/pseuds/Pixiepeekboo
Summary: Lydia Martin is on trial for a crime she can't remember - taking the fall for a boy she once loved but now can't even recall the sight of his face.
Relationships: stydia - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Remember, I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo....this kind of came out of nowhere. But Stydia are so cute, and the thought of them being a criminal couple warms the cockles of my heart, LOL.  
> Normally not the kind of thing I write about, but anyway. Hope you like it ;)

The photograph was in faded pastels, with a thick white edge, like an old fashioned Polaroid, instantly printed after snapping the picture. It was a couple – the girl had her nose scrunched up like pig snout, right up against the boy’s cheekbone, and she looked like she was biting him and maybe laughing at the same time. The boy’s eyes were wide – startled, pleased, euphoric, even if his face was contorted, half in exaggerated pain, half in laughter.  
“Do you know who this is?” The interviewer asked.  
I looked down at the podium below me. It was made from oak – solid and darkened with age. Someone, long ago, had used the edge of their thumbnail to carve their initials into it. Now they were marked in history, in the courtroom of the island’s adjoining mainland. It struck me, the desperation to not be forgotten that they would carve a name for themselves into the world. Is that how you want to be remembered? As a ghost, forging your name in the hope that someone out there might one day see it?  
“Ms. Martin,” The Interviewer snapped, impatient with me.  
I jolted myself out of my reverie, eyes reluctantly flicking back to the photograph he held in front of me. My fingers steepled and twisted together, and the chain connected to them clinked. Both my hands and feet were cuffed to the podium. Deemed safer – not only for myself, but for everyone in the courtroom. Something about a deterrent from my self-destructive behavior. I swallowed the caustic bile bleeding up my throat.  
Say something, Lydia, I ordered myself.  
The photograph gleamed underneath the harsh courtroom lights. The glow seemed to ignite the boy’s eyes, as if he weren’t contained by the boundaries of the three by four inch rectangle of plastic and paper.  
I returned my eyes to the interviewer and told the truth. “No,” I said.  
The interviewer screamed through their teeth. They tore the photograph in half and let the severed halves drift to the courtroom floor. Someone gasped – belatedly, I realized it was me. The Judge, the Jury, the witnesses, and audience – everyone in the room – stared at me. The interviewer shoved their hands through their hair, stalking away from me before turning sharply and charging right up until we were level – eye to eye, brain to brain, soul to soul. Not heart to heart, though. Never on the same wavelength.  
“How is that possible when you are the girl in the picture?” they asked. “How can you deny it when the tangible evidence is right there? How can you lie?”  
I flinched away from them and looked down at my hands. My knuckles had healed, under the dedicated administrations of the prison nurse. My fingers, however, told a different story – all the tips from my left hand no longer existed – from the edge where the pad of my finger and my fingernail should have been, to that first knuckle – there was nothing. Stumps. Stubs. I used to get compliments on my hands all the time – family used to tell stories about how my great grandmother had been a professional hand model. And then, there was the darkened skin circling my fourth finger, evidence of where I’d once worn a ring. I curled my fingers in against my palms.  
“I’m not lying,” I whispered.  
The Judge leaned over the edge of their seat, staring down at me. The eyes that fixed on me did not want to condemn, I don’t think. But they were not soft or forgiving. Innocent until proven guilty, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the opposite. I’d never been good at reading people.  
The Interviewer rubbed a hand down their face.  
To the side of my podium, an operative and guard dog were positioned, for the off-change I might escape my cuffs and attempt to flee, with a room full of witnesses. The dog was beautiful – a German Shepherd almost completely swathed in black fur. Her ear twitched toward me, as though I’d made a sound, and her head whipped to the side, looking up at me. The operative standing with her lowered their hand to their weapon and glared at me.  
“Okay, okay,” the interviewer said, lifting their hands in front of them. “What about this – listen to this. Tell me if it sounds familiar to you.” They’d returned to their bench to rifle through the briefcase seated on the desktop. But now they turned back to me, holding a tape recorder in their hands. A cold sweat broke out across my spine and I shifted in my seat as the interviewer stepped up until we were on level again. They waited until the room became so absolutely, completely still I thought the mere silence alone would drive me to insanity. The cold crackled through my body like ice shifting in a glass of water. It numbed me beyond the ability to move.  
The interviewer clicked play on the tape recorder.  
The sound of a heavy rain filled the room. I closed my eyes, trying to lose myself in the sensation. I could practically smell the wet pavement, hear the twinkling of far off sirens, feel a hand pressed so hard against my cheek our skin almost merged.  
“I can’t live without you!” A voice, unmistakably mine, broke through the rain. It was a horrible, jarring sound. Tears drowned my eyes, washed down my face in spite of myself. I opened my eyes.  
“Turn it off,” I said in a low voice.  
“Please, you can’t go – I love you! I-I can’t go back to before. Do you know how long it was since I’ve felt awake? Since I’ve felt alive?”  
“I’m sorry.” The voice that came then destroyed me. My brain told me it should be attached to a face, to a human being, to a memory. Every nerve and particle of my body honed in on it, recognized it, knew it as deeply as I knew how much I utterly despised myself – but there was only an empty void, with broken heart threads reaching, reaching for something, anything in that absolute, crushing darkness.  
I shot to my feet from the desk, my chains biting into my skin. “Turn it off!” I screamed. “Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!”  
The German Shepherd barked, lunging against the leash in the operative’s hands. He jerked the dog back on all fours. Everyone in the room lurched from their seats. One of the guards stationed near the Judge barked, “Someone get her sedated, now. Quickly!”  
“Wait,” the Judge said, lifting a hand.  
The blood curdled in my veins. I couldn’t listen to that voice again. I couldn’t go through this again, I couldn’t – I wouldn’t. I’d die first.  
“This is the most we’ve broken through in weeks. I think it’s time. Sit down, child. We aren’t quite over yet.”  
I slammed against the desk, again and again, until I thought my brains would burst through my forehead. But then a guard was there, grabbing me by the hair and wrenching my face up.  
“Stop!” he commanded in a way that told me he thought I was disgusting. Maybe I was. I didn’t even know what I was resisting for, anymore. Why didn’t I just let them condemn me to death?  
“Bring him in,” Judge said.  
I rocked forward, no command over my own bones. The guard wrenched me back. And then the courtroom doors opened. I couldn’t breathe. There was a boy there was a boy there was a boy there was a boy there was a –  
He was beautiful in a way that made my heart hurt. His hair was buzzed down, revealing all the knobs and hollows of his skull. There were deep purpled rings beneath his eyes. He was bigger than the guards, but not as built – slighter, leaner, a Cheetah instead of a lion. Our gazes met and I wanted to wash myself in the colors.  
Unbidden, a name rose to my memory. A flicker of something I'd once experienced, an ode to the life I once lived.  
Stiles, I thought.


End file.
